


Bless My Darkness, Bless My Light

by orphan_account



Series: pjo/hoo angsty wangsty bullshit [3]
Category: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard - Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Amputation, Angst, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Murder-Suicide, Survival Horror, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>I felt a break in a sacred place where your hands don't heal</em><br/><em>These are the reasons you're ruled by the things you fear</em><br/><br/>»»-------------¤-------------««</p><p>It’s an obnoxious group, Nico thinks. Him, Jason, Leo, Piper, Annabeth, and Will. It used to have Percy and Reyna, too, but now it doesn’t. Now Percy and Reyna aren’t around anymore, and so the rest of them have to say silent when they hear Annabeth referring to him in the present tense because none of them know what to say, and they have to watch as Jason will call for Reyna to watch his back only to realize that she can’t watch it anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bless My Darkness, Bless My Light

**Author's Note:**

> [music for recommended listening. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmEK31ghdFM/)   
>  [here's my personal blog.](http://luciferslittlekitten.tumblr.com/)   
>  [here's my writing blog.](http://gods--among--us.tumblr.com/)

It’s Oklahoma, now, they say, but all they can do is guess because they say they haven’t seen a street sign and all they’ve seen is flat land for acres and occasionally a small town. They say they’re looking for a big city, or better yet, the capital. Annabeth says it’s Oklahoma City because it’s an easy capital to remember and she’s got all the states and capitals memorized and sometimes she mumbles them under her breath when the group is walking because the car they’d just found is broken down or it runs out of gas and they have to walk for what seems like miles and miles.

It’s an obnoxious group, Nico thinks. Him, Jason, Leo, Piper, Annabeth, and Will. It used to have Percy and Reyna, too, but now it doesn’t. Now Percy and Reyna aren’t around anymore, and so the rest of them have to say silent when they hear Annabeth referring to him in the present tense because none of them know what to say, and they have to watch as Jason will call for Reyna to watch his back only to realize that she can’t watch it anymore.

Frank and Hazel had been trapped on the other side of the globe when the outbreak began. No one knew where they were, but had Jason said that they were alive. They were tough. Even still, Will always tells Nico that they were smart, they would make it, and Nico tries to believe him. He tries to believe the sweet lies that were being fed to him because that was the only thing he can do.

(He was supposed to have been an uncle in July, but now July is a year past and he doesn’t feel an awful lot like an uncle.)

Leo tells jokes still. He’s always been one to hide pain with humor, but now he has to pick up the slack for five other people. It used to be seven other people. There used to be eight of them. That doesn’t matter, though. There’s six of them now.

Leo keeps the group together, like glue. His optimism is the only thing keeping them all from crumbling. It’s unfair that they leave that position to him. They all know it’s unfair, but they can’t stop him if they wanted to. Whether they tell him to knock it off it not, he will still shove his rations at Nico even though Nico knows damn well there are ribs showing through tan skin under his oversized shirt, and when he would opt to take the most uncomfortable sleeping position in any shelter they might or might not find against all of their complaints. There are bags under Leo’s eyes from the nights that he stays up, sitting next to Annabeth and quietly singing to her until she can finally manage to fall asleep without having Percy’s body pressing up against her for warmth because she had to watch that body get mauled by _them._

Jason used to lean against the side of any car the group happened to find and hand Leo tools while he repaired it so they could drive rather than walk. Piper always drove first shift, no matter how tired she was. She used to trade off with Annabeth and Will, but now she only traded off with Will because Annabeth’s hands shook too much to drive and her eyes were glossy.

Leo couldn’t repair cars anymore after a day in March. They knew it was March because Will kept a calendar in his pocket and when he’d announce it was a new month, Annabeth tended to mumble the syllables under her breath and rub her arms and mark the word into scratchable surfaces with her knife. She had helpfully carved ‘MARCH’ in all capitals in the backseat of the SUV they had most recently borrowed.

The attack came from nowhere. They were somewhere in Arkansas at the time, working their way along city streets and trying to find a grocery store or superstore or something, and thankfully, they eventually found a Wal-Mart. It was mostly picked over, but they found some things. Some things leftover that would serve as nice medical additions to Will’s ever-growing collection. They hadn’t expected to be attacked inside, but there was a horde on their feet before they could stop them or before Jason could properly warn them. There was a struggle, but they were strong, and they proved victorious.

Until they saw Leo, gripping his left shoulder and staring at him helplessly, blood dripping down his arm.

Will had pushed his way forward, even as Piper laid a hand on his shoulder and gave him a look. He pushed it off and made his way to Leo. Will had been in his third year of medical school when the world went to shit, so they could only hope he could do something. They were only standing a few feet from the pair of them, so they could all hear Will’s shaky intake of breath, and then the answer that no one wanted. “We’ll have to amputate his arm before the infection can…”

Piper’s grip tightened on her hatchet before she stepped forward and handed it to him, not looking at him nor Leo. “Take it. Do it.”

He did, and then Piper stepped back. Jason instinctively laced hands with her. “I can’t promise survival,” Will told them, “We’re low on first aid, but-,”

“Say it to me,” Leo spoke up, “Tell me my chances, Will, I can take it. I’m a big boy.”

Will took a breath and turned to face him. “If this isn’t done perfectly? You might have under half an hour.”

Annabeth whimpered, Piper buried her face in Jason’s shoulder, and Nico locked eyes with Leo, who smiled at him. It looked scarily genuine.

Leo slowly pulled his hand from his shoulder, wincing as he removed the pressure.

Will set his bag on the ground, rooting around for something before pulling out a roll of gauze bandage. He took a wipe and gently wiped off the blade of Piper’s hatchet before taking a few hesitant steps towards Leo and wrapping off where he was going to cut. “I suggest you all go try to find more supplies.”

Nico began to walk away, but on second thought, took Annabeth’s hand and dragged her with him. She irritated him a lot, the way she could get by with acting like a child. He knew she wasn’t mentally stable, but still, she was so useless. He could tell Piper didn’t want to leave Leo’s side, but Jason led her away anyways.

He and Annabeth were going through the freezer aisles when they heard Leo’s scream resonate through the Wal-Mart.

Leo didn’t repair cars after that.

...

The thing was and still is: Will isn’t antsy about gore, he had never been, but Nico is. Nico hates blood and all of that stuff, he can’t stand it. He remembers watching Will study for class and cringing at the things in his textbooks. It's always been disgusting in his eyes. Even when they were just pictures in a textbook Will was studying over their kitchen table or on the couch or when the both of them would lay on their queen-sized bed and Nico would quiz Will over the test subjects.

He thinks he’s mapped out the entirety of their old apartment in his mind, and sometimes, in his daydreams, he walks through it. He misses their mismatched furniture and cozy yellow bedspread and their shitty coffee maker Will always said he would replace but never did.

Nico would give anything to have another cup of coffee from that shitty coffee maker and to sit cuddled up next to Will on their ugly floral couch wrapped in the quilt Nico’s grandma made for him as a boy.

He wants to go on his Sunday coffee dates with Reyna and talk about stupid nothings and laugh at her bad jokes. He thinks he misses Reyna the most, maybe not more than Hazel, but definitely up there. It was hard to lose someone like her, knowing that she might’ve lived if he were just a little bit stronger, smarter, faster, _something_. He wants her by his side again, her sisterly protection and motherly guidance and he wants her to suffocate him in her sparing but worthwhile hugs and tell him that it’ll be okay, that he’ll be okay, that she loves him.

And he wants Hazel, too, and he wants to know if Emily-Marie Zhang is okay, if she was even born, knowing  _anything_ about her and Hazel and even Frank would content him. He wants to take his niece out for ice-cream and to the playground and he wants her to snuggle up on the couch with him and Will and he wants family dinners with Hazel and his dad and her mom, even though he had never liked his step-mom, she gave him Hazel, which made Nico tolerate her.

He knows he shouldn’t yearn like this because it makes things worse, but he can’t help himself.

Annabeth does that too, it seems, only aloud.

“He was going to marry me,” she says, clearly and not a mumble, in the cars on the nights where Leo can’t fall asleep and Nico has himself pressed against Will and Piper sits in the driver seat, dim headlights illuminating the back roads they were driving on, and across from her, Jason. On this specific night in this specific car, a Honda Pilot with three rows of seats so Annabeth can lay in the very back row all by herself, she rambles.

“He was going to marry me,” she speaks up, “We were going to get married on the beach, and we weren’t going to buy expensive suits and dresses-,”

Jason anxiously bobs his leg in the passenger seat.

“-he said he wanted to marry me in a bathing suit, and that he didn’t want me to bother with fancy meals or drinks or expensive makeup-,”

Will’s grip on Nico tightens.

“-he said that we’d have grilled shrimp and beers and that it’d be a true Australian wedding. Oh, I did tell you he was Australian, didn’t I?”

Finally, Leo clears his throat and speaks up. “Yeah. We know he’s a kangaroo fucker, Annabeth.”

She chuckles and it’s wrong. It’s her spacey, out-of-it giggle, not her normal laugh. Like when Percy had cracked a joke and she would laugh even though it wasn’t all that funny. She hasn’t laughed like that since October 21st, the year Percy led them to a local grocery store, and they came back with only seven people and Reyna had tried to console Annabeth, but Annabeth could only stare at the walls of the suburban home they were staying in and whisper his name under her breath.

“But he was joking about that Australian part. He said that he wanted us to have a real beach wedding, just the two of us, like a honeymoon. No fancy receptions or outfits, just signing a paper and opening a bottle of wine on the shorelines.”

“That sounds really romantic,” Leo comments.

“Mhm. He is a romantic guy, isn’t he?” she says dreamily.

Piper’s gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles have got to be white. Jason lays a hand on her shoulder to calm her, but it didn’t look like it worked.

“Yeah, he was.”

“Is,” and Annabeth’s voice sounds almost desperate as she says it, clipping over Leo’s sentence like she’s clinging to the hope that he’s still with her.

Nico feels Will’s intake of breath against his chest.

“Of course, Annabeth, is,” Leo corrects himself, “Maybe you should catch some shut eye.”

“I guess so,” she agrees, “Goodnight!”

There is a silence in the vehicle instead of a resounding ‘goodnight’ like there would have been two deaths and one arm ago. Nico falls asleep leaning into Will that night. He didn’t think Will slept at all.

Will is prone to sleepless nights. He thinks it has something to do with his doctor’s anxiety or something like that. Will blames himself for every accident relating to health he can think of, even ones that don’t make sense. Jason is like that too, perhaps to a higher extent. Jason is all too ready to pin things on himself. To blame himself for things he couldn’t have prevented and take responsibility for nothing but the bad things. Piper tries to convince him otherwise, but he seems set in his ways.

Leo will often joke about his amputation (he calls himself Jason’s righthand man very often), trying to lighten the mood surrounding the fact he now is one arm down, but it doesn’t work like he wants it to. It makes things worse, if anything.

Everyone is stressed. Nico doesn’t think there is ever a point at any given time where all of them are completely relaxed. Will smokes to relieve the stress. He might’ve been a doctor, but he had picked up a pack from a general store they raided two years ago and had been lighting up whenever he could since then. Nico smoked sparingly. Reyna would’ve ridden his ass for that, but now Reyna isn’t here. He really doesn’t like it, but sometimes it really does help, in a weird way.

Will used to smell like citrus and roses, but now he smells like earth and smoke. He’s still the same Will, but he’s not annoyingly optimistic and happy-go-lucky anymore. He’s serious now, and Nico understands that he needs to be, but he wants that overly cheerful smile and gorgeous laugh that brought color to his cheeks. Sometimes, though, when Will laughed or hugged him or told a stupid joke, Nico could swear that he smelled lemonade. He was probably fooling himself, though.

He shouldn’t dream of things he could never have back.

…

“I think he’s in love with her,” Piper whispers to him one night, eyes flicking over to Leo. Will is on the other side of him, half asleep, and across from him Leo is smiling at Annabeth, but that smile wavers and falls every time she looks away. They’re going to do it tonight. They have talked about it a lot, about how food and other supplies are always going to be tight, and even tighter with a person in their group who takes, takes, takes, and never gives.

So they had decided to kill Annabeth.  
  
The idea came from Jason one evening. Leo had absolutely shot down the very idea, but as time went on, and situations got direr, they realized, one by one, that Jason’s idea held some merit. Nico thinks that Leo realized this last of all of them. Nico held it to Leo being a leader who didn’t want any of his soldiers to die, but that wasn’t it. As soon as that sentence left Piper’s lips, he started understanding how that made so much more sense. It makes him feel nothing but pity for Valdez.

Will tells Nico that Annabeth is dealing with her trauma in a way that may seem strange to some. She’s well-meaning but unable to help, lest it brings back memories that can reduce her to a shivering, stuttering mess. She is no better than a child is the impression Nico gets from that. He did feel bad, though, as Annabeth speaks casually with Leo, who seems to be trying too hard to remain conversational.

They’re all sitting in a rather roomy shed they had found in some forest backing up to a city. There is probably a home somewhere nearby, but they hadn’t had time to look for it. Besides, the shed serves its purpose. When the doors finally open, the room chills over, though it isn’t particularly hot outside. It’s like an omen of death, and in retrospect, that’s exactly what it is. Jason has a gun with three bullets in his right hand he’d picked up from a farmhouse a while ago. Guns weren’t preferred weapons for fighting zombies since the noise of the shot often brought in even more hordes, but Nico thanks God he has one because it makes this all a little more humane. As humane as one can make an assassination of one of their friends, anyhow.

“Annabeth,” Jason says, voice slightly reluctant, and Nico can tell he doesn’t want to be doing this any more than Leo wants it to be happening, “Can I see you a sec?”

She stands up, “Alright,” she says, and Leo grabs her hand a minute to keep her in place. He opens his mouth to say something, but then he blinks and slowly closes his mouth, dropping his gaze and letting go of her hand. He’s shaking, Nico notes, and he wraps his arm around himself.

Annabeth doesn’t think anything of it.

She steps outside, and Jason gives the four of them still in the room an apologetic glance before shutting the door with a bang. The room is deadly quiet, Leo refuses to look at any of them, and Piper looks like she wants to say something but isn’t quite sure what. Nico doesn’t know how to approach this either. What do you say to someone in a situation like this?

Nico scarcely has time to wonder, though. Less than a minute later, a loud shot rings through the forest, and Will’s grasp tightens on Nico’s arm as he’s shocked all the way awake.

Jason comes back in with one less bullet and one more strike on the casualty count.

...

Leo hasn’t been cracking jokes anymore, not since Annabeth died.

Will’s been trying his best to keep morale up, but Nico knew his oblivious optimism fizzled out a long while ago. Jason and Piper are back at the home they took up shelter in two days ago. The house is just a random one in a suburban neighborhood in some larger town, but it was nice nonetheless. It has (slightly) running water, which is a huge plus.

Some days, Nico thinks survival isn’t worth it. They are living to die. Although he supposed they would be doing so regardless of the apocalypse, and they had to die to live, contradictory as that may be.

Leo’s the head of the supply run you go out on with him and Will. He has never been a very strict instructor, but his shift has tightened up considerably since Annabeth. He suggests, well, more like orders that they split up so they can get in and out easily. They aren’t searching for anything in particular, so Nico just grabbed what he could find. Nico didn’t find much. Box of tampons, a single roll of toilet paper, and some toothpaste, but that’s about it. He’s about to report back to Leo, but he hears footsteps behind him.

Wordlessly, he slides his bag back onto his shoulders and unsheathes his blade. He’s quiet, noises attract walkers above everything else, and he steps back until he can press his back against the trashed front shelves of the aisle. He glances down the partnering aisle and is met by an unfriendly sight. There’s a zombie charging at him before he can assess the situation properly, and he barely has time to take a stab at him. The zombie let out an inhuman groan, even though he can’t be pained, he is put off, so Nico brings up his knee to slam it into its chest and but the thing catches him off balance and knocks him back. It’s all he can do to keep it’s teeth from sinking into his shoulder.

The struggle is favoring the walker, obviously, but then there’s a shot and the thing slumps onto him, and Nico pushes the body off of him. He looks up to see a man. He can’t be much older than him or that much better off, either, except for the fact he’s toting a loaded handgun. He aims it steadily at his head for a moment before his arm jerks up and shoots something behind him instead. Nico hears the thump of a body and then the cocking of the gun as it’s pointed back at him.

“It’s not very smart to have a gun,” Nico tells him, which is probably not his best move yet, and the guy looks back down at him and raises an eyebrow.

“No, really?” he asks sarcastically, “Get up. Are you alone? I’ve got a group that will help.”

Nico shakes his head. “I’ve got a group, too,” he says. He doesn’t know if he should trust this stranger or not, but what with the world ending and all substantial hope being effectively lost, he thinks he’ll take his chances. “Two others are with me, two others back at our shelter.”

“Cedarwood Ridge?” he questioned, “The rich neighborhood?”

“No. The one about a ten minute’s walk from there, Stone Brook. Lesser chance of those houses being raided.”

He nods. “Alright, well, get up. Can I have a name.”

“Nico di Angelo,” he tells him, “You?”

“Call me Magnus,” he introduces himself curtly, “I’ve got two others with me.”

Magnus has hair that looks like it’d dip past his shoulders if let down, but he keeps it tied up in a ponytail. He’s wearing dirty blue jeans and a shirt depicting a bull’s head with the text “Texas Longhorns” above it and a bomber jacket over it. Nico assumed he picked it up from some looted store, as his group did with clothing. He was very tall, lanky, though, and Nico could say Jason probably only beat him in height by an inch or so.

There're thundering footsteps pounding against the tile floor of the Target, and Magnus raises his gun, but someone runs out of the aisles and holds up her arms.

“Magnus!” she shouts, “There're other people here, and Calypso and I talked to them, but we got attacked, and-.”

“Take me to them,” Magnus commands, and she nods, racing back down the aisles. Magnus nods at Nico, who follows after him, heart beating in his throat. He doesn’t know if he wants to know who got attacked.

When the girl who had called for Magnus (shorter than him by quite a few inches, darker skinned, brunette hair, tattered green scarf wrapped around her neck) gets back to the scene, there is another woman (cinnamon-color hair, brown eyes, wearing Capri shorts and a blood-stained blue shirt) sitting before Will, who sat on an overturned metal tub, her dainty fingers running across his neck. Leo is behind the pair of them, leaning on the shelves and staring down at the pair of them anxiously.

“Will?” he whispers, taking a hesitant step forward. When Will turns to him, Nico’s heart stops.

There’s a mark on his neck.

He’s bitten.

His breathing is uneasy, and his eyes are trained on the bleeding mark. This can’t be happening. He can’t lose Hazel, Reyna, _and_ Will. It isn’t fair. (Bitterly, he remembers what his dad always told him, "Fair is a place where you go and eat cotton candy. Life isn't "fair", Nico.) 

“He’s got half an hour before he starts to show signs of..” the girl in front of Will grips his chin and tips his head up, trailing off in her diagnosis, and she turns to Nico and gives him an empathetic look, “I’m so sorry.”

Something cold bumps against his shoulder, and Nico realizes it’s Magnus’ gun. “Here,” he tells him, holding it out to him, “You can take care of him. It’s not our place.”

Nico stares down at the handgun, not quite believing that this is real. He wants so badly to believe this was a bad dream, but it isn’t, it’s very real, so he takes the gun from Magnus and it feels cold and out of place in his hands. Leo touches the shoulder of the woman who had been inspecting Will and gives her a hand to help her up.

“Come on,” Magnus murmurs, “We’ll be around the corner, Nico.”

There were footsteps that signaled their exit. Nico wishes that this hadn’t been placed on his shoulders of all people, but the supposes it was better he do it than a stranger or making Will do it himself.

Will stares at the gun Nico holds at in an emotion he couldn’t place. “I can do it, Nico,” he says, “I’ll do it myself.”

Nico’s grip tightens on the gun. He steps forward, kneels down, and grabs Will’s hand with his free one.

“You know I love you.”

“I know,” Will nods. Then hastily adds, almost if realizing this is the last time he can ever say it, “I love you too.”

Nico takes a shaky breath, leaning forward and kissing Will.

Simultaneously, he presses the gun to his boyfriend’s skull and breaks the kiss as he pulls the trigger.

**Author's Note:**

> ahhahhhh just call me the angst queen baby because thATS ALL I CAN WRITE


End file.
